On 7th of April 2022, CRC228 researcher Michael Bollig gave a public lecture on the topic “Social and Cultural Anthropology – challenges and options for interdisciplinary engagement: perspectives from Germany” at our cooperation partner University of Namibia.
Social and Cultural Anthropology has been taught at Universities in the Global North since the late 19th century and in southern Africa since the 1920s. Through one hundred years of academic development it has liaised with different disciplines. His paper tries to capture the role of social and cultural anthropology in Germany in the early 21st century in the interdisciplinary concert of academic disciplines. It focusses on interdisciplinary entanglements in teaching and research. Due to the broad interests of the discipline ranging from livelihood studies and household economies to religion and spirituality anthropologists are capable to communicate into different directions.
In his talk, Prof. Bollig argued that based on BA courses that provide for sound methodological training and multiple theoretical orientations, MA courses should offer both more specialization and various interdisciplinary options. In the research set up social and cultural anthropology can work convincingly with various other disciplines especially if it is allowed to bring in its holistic grasp of complex couplings of society, culture, economy and nature.
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